He lived as a bogus peer for 22 years. Now he's in jail. But who is he?

For 22 years he deceived his wife, his children, his employers and the UK authorities. Posing as Christopher Edward, Earl of Buckingham, he married, had a son and a daughter, obtained a British passport, national insurance number and driving licence, worked as an IT consultant and boasted of owning four hereditary titles.

But in what a judge yesterday called an "intriguing conundrum", the mystery man who called himself Lord Buckingham had stolen his identity from an eight-month-old baby who died in 1963, in a direct copy of the plotline from Frederick Forsyth's thriller, The Day of the Jackal.

Given a last chance to reveal his true identity at Canterbury crown court yesterday, the bogus peer refused. He smiled and raised a single eyebrow as Judge Adele Williams jailed him for 21 months for admitting making a false application for a passport. Despite his guilty plea, she said he had shown no remorse for what was "full-scale identity fraud".

"Inevitably, someone doesn't assume a false identity unless there is a very good reason, or some very, very deep-seated cause," the judge said.

As he was led to the cells, police said their attempts to uncover his identity were continuing in Israel, South Africa, Germany and Switzerland, where he has lived most recently. But Detective Constable Dave Sprigg said: "I think he has got some dark secret and I don't think he will ever reveal who he is."

The court heard that "the most astonishing, complex and massive lie" began to unravel at 1.30pm on January 15, when the bogus peer was stopped at the port of Calais for a routine passport check while driving a hired car from Switzerland to the UK. The check revealed that his passport had been revoked in 2003, during a trawl which showed that it exactly matched the details of a dead child in the register of births, marriages and deaths.

Under the name Christopher Edward Buckingham, the fraudster had met his wife to be, Jody, while backpacking in Bavaria in the 1980s. They married in 1984 and had a son and a daughter, aged 16 and 19, who took his name. He later purloined a title, the Earl of Buckingham, albeit one that had been extinct since 1687.

When Kent police searched his car, documents backing up his false identity were discovered; a driving licence in the name of Christopher Edward Buckingham, a car registration document for an MGB, a cheque book and a credit card statement.

Also found was a large quantity of notepaper headed with the heraldic crest of the Duke of Buckingham and the address of his "manor house" at Little Billing, Northamptonshire - which turned out to be a three bedroomed semi.

"I see that you are a lord?" one police officer asked.

"Yes, that's right," he replied.

"Where did you get your title?" the officer asked.

"My father, when he died," he replied.

Police later established that the real Christopher Edward Buckingham was born on December 24 1962 and died aged eight months on August 28 1963 while on a caravan holiday in Bognor Regis with his mother, Audrey Wing.

The mystery man applied for the passport in the child's identity in 1983, the same year he obtained a UK national insurance number. "It is a clear and direct copy of a device used in the Day of the Jackal," said Trevor Wright, prosecuting.

When interviewed the fraudster was asked for his parents' dates of birth. "Oh gosh", he replied, before claiming that his mother was born in 1952. If true, it would have made her 10 when he was born. Although he claimed he held four manorial titles, he could not remember all their names, but DC Sprigg said the alarm bells really started ringing when he could not tell him the schools he attended. "I have never met anyone who can't remember what school they went to," DC Sprigg said.

The baby's mother, Mrs Wing, only discovered in April this year that her child's identity had been stolen. "I just want to ask him why he did it," she said yesterday. "What he has done has brought everything back to me."

The consequences for Buckingham's own children, who cannot be named, will not end with his prison sentence. The prosecutor said the UK authorities had ordered their British passports to be revoked with immediate effect because they were obtained under a false name.

In a statement read to the court, Buckingham's Canadian-born ex-wife, Jody, who lives in Northants with their children, said: "They [my children] are in a state of limbo; they are not sure who they are."

Speaking earlier, she said her former husband claimed he was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and his parents were diplomats. "He said they died in an air crash in Egypt in 1982. Early on in the relationship he was fine, we were bringing up two children and there was not much money. Toward the end he was incredibly controlling. But I don't think he was evil, it seems he was a Walter Mitty."

Buckingham intends to return to Zurich when he is released, where he claims documents in a safety deposit box will prove his innocence. But the judge said yesterday that with no valid documents and no identity he will be unable to leave the UK.